The Woods Are Lonely, Dark, and Deep
by Min Daae
Summary: Nan Elmoth is full of shadows, and Aredhel is not one of them. AU.


Nan Elmoth was dark.

It wasn't that she wasn't used to the dark, or to dark woods. It wasn't that she was _frightened, _and woe betide the soul that suggested it. It was the quality of the darkness, the way it seemed not just to be absent of light, but to consume and devour it, and the way the trees bent old and sour and twisted over her head, like they'd been poisoned.

She looked at them and felt no welcome, and that was why Aredhel daughter of Fingolfin son of Finwë went toward the house. Because it was light, and the trees seemed to close around her. After all, the heart of these trees was dark, and Aredhel came from the Sunlit Lands.

He welcomed her, and let her in. She drank of his wine and ate of his food, accepted his invitation to stay for the night.

And woke a different woman.

~.~

Sometimes the darkness overwhelmed her.

Sometimes she felt herself surrounded and suffocating, and wondered why she had come here, where it was difficult to tell shadow from shadow from shadow, and her husband was just one more.

That was how she thought of him. As a shadow that had detached from the woods and come to her sweet-tongued and handsome of aspect, and wooed her and seduced her and bound her in shadow chains. When she thought this, she looked at him and shied away, fearful of his shadow intentions.

And yet he never treated her poorly. It was when she was without him that she was frightened. When she sat alone in their little house and looked out at the darkness pressing at the windows.

When she was alone, it wasn't the darkness that frightened her. It was the fact that she didn't know herself.

And then he came back, and she knew. She was his wife, and that was all.

She loved him, she did, but the shadows spilled out of his mouth when he was angry and she thought they would smother her.

Her son, her beautiful shadow-son. Her shadow-son and her shadow-husband in this shadow-house. Aredhel sometimes wondered if there was anything left in the world but shadows, but she never asked aloud for fear that someone would answer.

~.~

She dreamed of other days, faraway days, of running or riding through sunlit fields as the light spilled down, of her hair flowing freely behind her in the wind, of the starlight on her face and long grass swishing against her legs.

They were beautiful dreams, and they made her angry, they made her restless, they made her unhappy.

Then, she hated him. Her jailer. Her cage. Her husband.

They fought, and it felt good to scream.

"Let me out."

"No."

"I need to get away from this house, this clearing. To see the sun."

"Then I will go with you."

"Don't you trust me?" She wheedled, but his lips pressed together and his expression darkened, but she refused to quail back.

"I trust _you,_" he said, but it was a lie, and she knew it.

"I'm not yours!" she cried. "I am not one of your shadows. This place hates me, and I hate it!" Her voice failed, broke. "I hate it."

He wrapped his arms around her then, and kissed her cheek. "Shhh," he murmured. "I'll make it all right, I promise. I'll make it all _right._"

She closed her eyes and herself, and shuddered. The dark that lived in and wove through and was her husband clasped her, throbbed wrongly against her.

It was suddenly very clear to her. She needed to get out of here.

~.~

The woods wouldn't let her go.

The next time Eol was gone, she took the horse and lifted her son, still small enough to sit in front of her, onto its back, and rode off.

Every trail led to a dead end, and the one that didn't led back to the house. She tried again, and then again, and another time in desperation, and was nearly weeping when she saw the little house again, full of light in these dark woods.

"Mother," said her young son, his face upturned to hers, "Where are we going? Why are you so quiet?"

And she saw it. The shadows writhing in his eyes, coiling around his tongue.

Her shadow-son, not made for the daylight. Lómion, the son of twilight. He wasn't hers to liberate. They would both be devoured, she consumed and he subsumed.

Already she could feel slow tendrils wrapping around her throat and screamed, throwing herself away from her son and fleeing into the house, where the deception of warmth and safety cocooned her, and she could breathe easily.

She dreamed the stars were dying, and her son became a monster of light and dark and fire.

~.~

She made dinner.

Maeglin – Lómion – was playing in the next room, and her husband walked in, took one look at her, and smiled. She smiled back, even if her eyes felt hollow and empty already.

She stirred the soup slowly, lowering her eyes to its slowly bubbling surface.

Aredhel ate none of it, just sat and listened with her hands in her lap as first Maeglin and then Eol began to yawn. Aredhel got up and ushered Maeglin to his feet.

"Go ready yourself for bed, love. I'll be right there."

She leant down to let him kiss her cheek and hug her round the neck, then watched him patter off as Eol slumped to the table, his cheek against the wood. She watched him breathe for several moments, then slowly walked over, selected a knife with care, placed her palm open on his back until she found the heartbeat and stabbed down.

She had been a hunter, once; she didn't miss.

He didn't wake up before dying.

She walked across the kitchen floor, after washing her hands, and stepped into Maeglin's room. He was struggling to rise when she came in, his jaw cracking and eyelids drooping. She smiled sadly.

"Just relax," she said, gentle as she'd been the first time she'd held him in her arms, a shadow-child of promises and lies. "Time to rest."

"Mama," he said, and it sounded like he was pleading. "I don't…feel so good."

She slipped inside and closed the door behind, came over and sat down on the bed to push his hair off his forehead. "It'll be all right," she whispered. "Just close your eyes. Just sleep."

"Mama," he murmured blearily, again, but his eyelids slid inexorably down.

"Hush," she said softly. "Mama will take care of everything. She promises."

There were things that grew, even in the dark.

She sat there for a long time, humming under her breath as she stroked his silky black hair, so quiet, so still; skin cooling and alabaster.

She went back to the kitchen and poured her cup of tea. She ignored the cooling corpse of her once-husband and slipped back into her child's bedroom. Her first and lastborn, from shadow into shadow.

She set her drink down and caressed Lómion's cheek, then kissed his forehead. Then Aredhel, daughter of Fingolfin son of Finwë, picked up her cup of tea and sipped it, the shadows pressing at her back.


End file.
